2026.168
On being an orphan
I don’t know when I’ll see you again, but I hope you live a happy life.
My mom texted me this after we said our goodbyes on Canal Street around 4 PM. I had not seen her in seven years. I try to picture her saying this to me in her uniquely feeble & childish, but didactic tone. I don’t interpret this text as sneering, but it’s not loving either. It would almost feel funny if it had any tinge of kindness. I think in her world, happiness is inseparable from compromise & it leaves me uneasy.
Two hours later, my mom wrote to my sister in the family group chat:
How are your midterms going? I’m sure you’re exhausted. Don’t stress too much, and I can’t wait to see you after. Let’s have so much fun when you’re back home. I have plenty of time off work.
I read this one in the voice of a middle school bully asking out the second-prettiest girl after getting rejected by the prettiest girl in school. Except this is my sister we’re talking about here, & I certainly shouldn’t call her the second prettiest.
Once, I asked A if he would date an orphan. I’ve referred to myself as an orphan to him several times in the beginning of our relationship because I felt the need to insert shock. In the past, I have told lovers plainly that I detested my parents, which was met with either skepticism or disconcerting selfishness. Some didn’t believe that time couldn’t heal everything. Some felt relieved that they didn’t have to split holidays two ways. So when I was starting fresh in New York & developing a relationship with A, I thought to explain my family dynamic & support system as equivalent to orphanhood– no parents, maybe an inheritance, & absolutely no returns if dissatisfied with the girl. In hindsight, this was uncouth, but I genuinely thought the bursts of “I am an orphan” carried a sense of drama & charm. When I said to him I am an orphan, I imagined he would hear the awe in my voice. How I find my life all so wondrous as an orphan with so many childhood memories, with the kind of damage that could only be done by real & alive parents. How, after all of it, I sit in the kitchen on a summer evening & write. Go to The Met on a Friday. Fall in love deeply.
Inductively speaking, nothing is simple. Not one family is just perfect. With garden-variety domestic troubles, the legitimacy of which depends on the quality of one’s memory, a daughter whose focus is on the damning is a Liar. As far as I can remember, my mom took me to the mall every now & then & we shared a lot of laughs. She drove me to ballet classes & made sure I had fuzzy socks for after. She taught me how to read & write in two different languages. She didn’t miss any parent-teacher conferences either. Most of all, she loved me, even though it was her first time being a mother.
Here on out, bear in mind that I am an unreliable narrator. A Liar.
My mother may or may not have wailed in my arms every week. She may or may not have called her husband a lying son of a bitch. She may or may not have pulled out a knife from the kitchen drawer. She may or may not have threatened to kill herself in front of her children. She may or may not have regretted ever having me out loud.
She’s a messed-up kid, my dad may or may not have said to the cops. It may or may not have been bruises on my ass. It may or may not have been that I provoked it. It may or may not have been his belt buckle. Or his golf club. Or a 40-inch metal ruler. Or all of the above.
It’s so cliché that it might as well all be a lie. There were no drugs or alcohol, I said during a session of DBT in 2020. They were all sober, I said, as if that distinction was proof that I was telling the truth.
On June 14th, at the intersection of Baxter & Canal around 4 PM, I called a cab for my parents to return to the hotel. I hugged them briefly & wished them safe travels back home. I didn’t look back as the car took off, & A & I walked to a Chinatown bakery that exuded bare minimum practicality. We bought three custard tarts & sat on a bench looking over a playground & a basketball court. The sticky summer afternoon smelled of roast pork & Littleleaf Linden. The flakes of pastry fell all over my t-shirt, & a house sparrow ate out of A’s palm the buttery crust. I put my feet up on his thighs & asked if we should get some more to go. We crossed the Williamsburg Bridge on the subway, then walked through a crowd of girls in red & blue mini skirts, men on elaborately customized motorcycles, & children holding Puerto Rican flags in the streets of Bushwick. We danced our way towards home to the deafening music of the parade– swinging our hips side to side, hopping over the pools of water flowing from open fire hydrants, kicking a corn cob on the ground, kissing each other’s sweaty cheeks. Holding his hand above my head, I spun around. We looked into each other’s eyes & he said to me, They’re gone now. You’re free.